A Study On Translation Of Jinling Panci By Hawks From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

Hong Lou Meng, as one of Chinese classics, has enjoyed extensive attention since its appearance in Qing dynasty in China. With the deepening communication of China with other countries in the world, this Chinese fiction has attracted more and more foreign scholars. The English version of Hong Lou Meng, The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes and John Minford, is the first whole translated version in English. The publication of it attracts many English readers immediately. As encyclopaedia of Chinese culture, Hong Lou Meng fascinates many foreign readers. As each culture has its peculiarity, it is difficult for the translator, as the disseminator of the culture, to communicate culture perfectly. The Jinling Panci in Chapter Five represents Chinese Chenwei tradition, and this thesis mainly deals with the Jinling Panci.Literary translation should not only occur at the level of linguistic symbols but also be the communication at the level of culture. The previous studies on Jinling Panci mainly focus on the comparison between the two English translated versions of Hong Lou Meng to find the differences and explore whose translation strategies are better. These kinds of studies are helpful for understanding the linguistic differences between the source text and translated text; while they ignore that translation activity as one of social activities happens in a certain social culture background and is influenced by some social factors inevitably. Jinling Panci in this thesis would be analyzed by applying Lefevere's manipulation theory, getting the conclusion that the translation activity is not only constrained by linguistic differences but also different social cultures.Manipulation theory is proposed by Belgian-born American scholar Andre Lefevere. Under the influence of Itamar Even-Zohar's polysystem theory, Lefevere holds that translation activity is a subsystem of the whole complex system known as a culture, and there are interactions between the literary system and other subsystems of the culture. He recognizes that translation is a rewriting of the source text to meet the requirements of the target readers under the manipulation of ideology, poetics and patronage in the target culture. The significance of manipulation theory lies in the two points. One is to recognize the rationality of the translated text, which is the start of translation study; the second is to focus on social culture factors manipulating the translation activityThe thesis is a descriptive translation study on English version of Jinling Panci by David Hawkes. This thesis is divided into five parts. Part one is introduction, which discusses the text characteristics of Jinling Panci and current translation studies on it. Part two and Part three deal with the analysis of the English version of Jinling Panci influenced by the Lefevere's manipulation factors in the perspectives of ideology and poetics. Part four is about the third factor, namely, patronage's manipulation in Jinling Panci's translating. Part five is the conclusion of this thesis and shows the limitation of the study.